Richard Blanco, inaugural poet, speaks to America

President Obama chose the first Cuban American and the first gay man to be the inaugural poet at his second inauguration this past Monday. Miami born and raised Richard Blanco is “a symbol of the new Miami, and a new America”, says J. J. Colagrande, professor at Miami Dade College and author of novels Headz and Decò.

A legacy of vice and hate stain the media image, and too often painful reality, of Miami. But, writes Colagrande,

“although Mr. Blanco lives in Maine, he has toiled in the relatively unknown world of poetry in Miami for years… [and ] the new Miami is where we take each other seriously; where we come together committed to the cultural and intellectual renaissance of our city; where we re-define ourselves for ourselves and the rest of the country. Mr. Blanco reading a poem on Monday at the presidential inauguration is a day of pride and joy for all those in the letters, Cuban-Americans, the LGBT community and every one of us.”

Blanco works as an engineer, is a member of the Bethel, Maine, planning board, and has kept his poetry mostly to himself and, of course, the intimate national network of poets and poetry lovers. In December, he was tasked by the inaugural committee with writing three original poems, one of which the committee would ask him to read at the ceremony in Washington on January 21. At age 44, he’s the youngest inaugural poet.

Richard Blanco’s Inaugural poem, One Today, perfectly and intimately captures the singular details of “Americanization” in the arts, crafts, and geographies of the diverse immigrant and native contributions to this multinational and multiracial country we are becoming, and from which we arose. Each stream, each life is unique, rich, and indispensable. Yet one sun, one sky, one ground, one sea of stars, one home – unite us.

One TodayInaugural Poem by Richard Blanco

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,peeking over the Smokies, greeting the facesof the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truthacross the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a storytold by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbowsbegging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper – bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives – to teach geometry, or ring up groceries, as my mother didfor 20 years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explainthe empty desks of 20 children marked absenttoday, and forever. Many prayers, but one lightbreathing color into stained glass windows,life into the faces of bronze statues, warmthonto the steps of our museums and park benches as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalkof corn, every head of wheat sown by sweatand hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmillsin deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, handsdigging trenches, routing pipes and cables, handsas worn as my father’s cutting sugarcaneso my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plainsmingled by one wind – our breath. Breathe. Hear itthrough the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,buses launching down avenues, the symphonyof footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,the unexpected song bird on your clothesline.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimedtheir majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado workedtheir way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more reportfor the boss on time, stitching another wound or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,or the last floor on the Freedom Towerjutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyestired from work: some days guessing at the weatherof our lives, some days giving thanks for a lovethat loves you back, sometimes praising a motherwho knew how to give, or forgiving a fatherwho couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weightof snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always – home,always under one sky, our sky. And always one moonlike a silent drum tapping on every rooftopand every window, of one country – all of us –facing the starshope – a new constellationwaiting for us to map it,waiting for us to name it – together

CONTRIBUTOR

John Case is a former electronics worker and union organizer with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE), also formerly a software developer, now host of the WSHC "Winners and Losers" radio program in Shepherdstown, W.Va.